Having been forced to withdraw
the U.N. team investigating massacres in Congo,
Secretary General Kofi Annan is weighing whether to
make
public a scathing report by the team that is certain
to
exacerbate the world body's already tense relations
with
Congolese President Laurent Kabila.
U.N. officials say the report implicates Congolese forces and the Rwandan military in massacres of large numbers of Hutu refugees from Rwanda, including women and children, during the seven-month guerrilla campaign that brought Kabila to power. Some officials said the report uses the word "genocide" to describe the killings.
Officials here are said to be divided over whether to release the report in its current form. Some U.N. officials, arguing for a long-run interest in political stability in Central Africa, advocate toning down or even suppressing the report as part of efforts to gain greater influence over Kabila.
On April 17, Annan ended the eight-month effort to probe reports that Kabila's guerrilla forces and their allies from the Tutsi-dominated army of neighboring Rwanda murdered thousands of Hutu refugees from Rwanda during the rebellion last year that toppled the former Zaire's longtime dictator, President Mobutu Sese Seko. Rwanda has a long history of animosity between Tutsis and Hutus, and the killings in Congo allegedly were part of a Tutsi retaliation for the 1994 Hutu genocide campaign that killed more than 500,000 Rwandan Tutsis.
Annan recalled the investigating team after the Kabila government's harassment of U.N. personnel had made it impossible to complete a thorough inquiry.
U.N. officials said much of the report that resulted from the aborted mission is based on hearsay and secondhand information. Nevertheless, the officials said the report is couched in highly emotional language, and some said it describes the treatment of Hutus in Congo as "genocide."
That has left Annan in a quandary over what to do with the report. To help him decide, he has asked for advice from three of his principal aides: Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Kieran Prendergast, undersecretary general for political affairs, and Hans Corell, the legal counsel. The sources said Annan has asked Prendergast to consolidate their views before he decides what to do with the report in the next few days.
U.N. officials said the internal discussions have revealed strong differences between human rights advocates like Robinson, who believe the report should be given full, uncensored exposure, and those who believe that such a course would antagonize Kabila without having any practical benefits. Their view, the sources said, is that Annan would be best advised to suppress the report or, failing that, issue it in a heavily edited, rewritten version that plays down many of the aspects likely to offend Kabila.
The advocates of that course are described as being largely within the political department of the U.N. secretariat. And they reportedly are motivated by the idea that Congo, the largest and most resource-rich country of Central Africa, is essential to the region's political stability. Thus, they argue, the United Nations has strong reasons for trying to coax Kabila, already hostile to the world body and most outside powers, toward democracy and seeking the outside aid and investment necessary to rebuild Congo's shattered economy.
The officials said they are not certain of the degree to which Prendergast, a veteran British diplomat who joined the secretariat last year, shares that view. However, when the United Nations first began trying to probe the massacres last summer, Prendergast publicly warned that human rights, while important, were only one of the considerations necessary to getting stability restored in Congo.
Initially, the United States took a similar approach, even interceding with Annan to seek various accommodations with Kabila for the investigation. However, as Kabila's authoritarian rule has sparked international disappointment, the United States has distanced itself from him. President Clinton, for instance, avoided Congo during his recent Africa tour and expressed U.S. misgivings about political restrictions there when he met Kabila at a summit conference in Entebbe, Uganda.
U.S. officials said today they have not seen the report and added that they essentially do not have a position on how Annan should deal with it. "We are hopeful it will provide as complete a study as possible and contribute to an understanding of what happened," a U.S. official said.